"Longing and (Un)belonging: Displacement and Desire in the Cinematic City." Paper from the Conference "INTER: A European Cultural Studies Conference in Sweden", organised by the Advanced Cultural Studies Institute of Sweden (ACSIS) in Norrköping 11-13 June 2007. Conference Proceedings published by Linköping University Electronic Press

Aitken S.

"Turnng the Self: City Space and SF Horror Movies." Lost in space : geographies of science fiction / edited by Rob Kitchin and James Kneale. London ; New York : Continuum, 2002.

In this lecture Nezar AlSayyad, professor of Architecture, Planning and Urban History at UCB, addresses some of the themes in his book Cinematic cities, historicizing the modern from reel to real. This event took place at the University of California, Berkeley on November 28, 2007. 30 min. DVD 9315

AlSayyad, Nezar

Cinematic urbanism : a history of the modern from reel to real New York ; London : Routledge, c2006.

"A special section on film and architecture. Articles include a discussion of architect Hans Polzeig's design of a complete town for the film The Golem, an examination of how Jacques Tati's film Playtime investigated modern architecture's comic and pleasurable potential, a consideration of the depiction of Los Angeles in Heat and a recent series of "Hood" films, and a discussion of the way in which the science-fiction aesthetic of a number of films that were designed over 20 years ago have influenced recent architectural designs." [Art Index]

"Los Angeles constitutes the very locus, spiritual font, and often the actual site of some of America's most cherished crime-movie fantasies. This is despite the fact that it is a city devoid of the topographical symbols and embedding of the past usually associated with detective narratives, especially film noir detective narratives. The writer examines what detective movies, from the postwar period to present day, have done with the ecology of L.A. and what L.A. has done with and to detective movies." [Art Abstracts]

Avila, E.

"Popular culture in the age of white flight: Film noir, Disneyland, and the cold war (sub)urban imaginary." Journal of Urban History, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 3-22, 2004

"This article takes popular cultural expressions as a window onto the transformation of the American city after World War II. First, it considers the film genre known as film noir as evidence of a larger perception of social disorder that ensued within the context of the centralized, modern city, which peaked at the turn of the century. Second, it turns to Disneyland as the archetypal example of a postwar suburban order, one that promised to deliver a respite from the racial and sexual upheaval that characterized the culture of industrial urbanism. Together, film noir and Disneyland illuminate the meanings assigned to the structural transformation of the mid-century American city and reveal the cultural underpinnings of a grass-roots conservatism that prized white suburban home ownership. Ultimately, this article emphasizes the interplay of structure and culture, demonstrating the linkage between how cities are imagined and how they are made." [Communications Abstracts]

An illustrated overview of images of cities and towns used in science-fiction motion pictures from 1926 to 1997.

Ball, Edward.

"The Cinematic city."
Metropolis 1987 Apr., v.6, no.8, p.56-59,65,67

Banks, M. J.

"Monumental Fictions: National Monument as a Science Fiction Space." Journal of Popular Film and Television v. 30 no. 3 (Fall 2002) p. 136-45

"Part of a special issue on fantastic films. The writer examines the symbolism of national monuments in this speculative genre. She notes that actual monuments or public architecture imbued with monumental importance work as metonyms of civic pride and power, as well as tacitly understood repositories of the country's "sacred" memories. As such, she claims that monuments are uniquely qualified to figure prominently in the "aesthetic of destruction." She explains that in movies such as Independence Day, the monument's facile destruction testifies to the great power of an alien race bent on bringing the nation or the world to its knees. She also analyzes a subgenre in which the monument is a signifier of the ravages brought about by time instead of aliens." [Art Index]

Barbara, Kathleen M.

"To the Rescue: The Cinematic Superhero and the Image of the City." In: The image of the city in literature, media, and society ; selected papers [from the] 2003 conference [of the] Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery / edited by Will Wright and Steven Kaplan. Pueblo, Co.: The Society, 2003

"Part of a special section devoted to man-made modular megastructures. The film noir produced by Hollywood between 1941 and 1958 presented the image of a mental megalopolis. Hollywood's entertainment of urban audiences was often paradoxical, creating a negative counterpoint to modern life. This was especially so in film noir, a morbid melodrama reminding audiences of the dark side of prosperity and which contrasted with the big-budget Hollywood celebration of the American way. The writer goes on to discuss examples from film noir, the "neo-noir" revival that began in the mid-1970s, and the present day." [Art Index]

Beattie, Keith

"From City Symphony to Global City Film:
Documentary Display and the Corporeal." Screening the Past, no. 20, 2006

"Part of a special section on architecture and motion pictures. The writer discusses the interplay of film and architecture in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. The chronological setting of the movie, its urban location, and the presence of replicants--an advanced form of robot--connect history, in the form of the future; architecture, in the form of Los Angeles and its urban environment; and the body, for example, in terms of the necessity to distinguish between replicant and human. The importance of this movie is that it allows a way of tracing a specific formation of these three elements, raising questions about the future and how it will be built." [Art Index]

"In order to inform the design of virtual environments (VEs), the writers consider architectural design and film theory. These two domains, they suggest, may constitute a background to consider possible metaphors for VEs' design. Through the nature of drawings and virtual environments as means of representing three-dimensional spaces, they explore the relation between architecture and virtual reality technology. They then compare VEs and physical environments to our daily spatial experience in order to understand the intrinsic nature of VEs. This step is, they argue, essential in helping toward an understanding of how an architectural conception of designing spaces might be developed in the context of VEs. In conclusion, they present two directions toward informing VE design by means of theoretical and practical architectural design knowledge and consider the use of film-related studies as a means of enhancing our conception of time and movement in VEs." [Art Index]

Brooke S, Cameron L.

"Anarchy in the UK? Ideas of the city and the fin de siecle in contemporary English film and literature." Albion 28 (4): 635-656 WIN 1996

"Part of a special section on learning from architectural history. The intersection of urban culture, architecture, and film is an extremely fertile and productive area of research. After decades of literary domination, the field of cinema studies has joined in the spatial turn that cultural history and theory have recently taken. In turn, architectural practice and theory have adopted a mobilized, cinematic viewpoint, interacting in various ways with the discourse of moving images. The writer goes on to present four filmic "takes" on this vital intersection from her own perspective, discussing the topics of history and modernity, spatial critical theory, filmic and architectural promenades, and haptic design." [Art Index]

Brunsdon, Charlotte

"'A fine and private place': the cinematic spaces of the London Underground." Screen 2006 47(1):1-17

"This article explores the attraction of underground railways as a setting in film through the detailed analysis of several films from the second half of the twentieth century. Opening with a discussion of the way the London Underground is used in the 1997 Ian Softley film, The Wings of the Dove, the article examines the cinematic spaces of the London Underground in both fiction and documentary film and television. Quatermass and the Pit (Roy Ward Baker, 1967) is discussed as an example of the one of the most common underground tropes, the eruption of horror from below ground, and this is contrasted with documentary films which present the tunnels of the underground as a place of work. Films discussed here include Philip Donellan's The Irishmen, Ralph Keene's Under Night Streets and Molly Dineen's Angel. It is suggested that the spaces of the underground are in some ways more analogous to cinematic spaces than has hitherto been recognised and that, for a public space, it is often represented as surprisingly private."

"The city viewed: the films of Leyda, Browning, and Weinberg." In: Lovers of cinema : the first American film avant-garde, 1919-1945 / edited by Jan-Christopher Horak. Madison, Wis. : University of Wisconsin Press, c1995. Wisconsin studies in film.

Cinematic Cities: Historicizing the Modern from Reel to Real [Videorecording]

In this lecture Nezar AlSayyad, professor of Architecture, Planning and Urban History at UCB, addresses some of the themes in his book Cinematic cities, historicizing the modern from reel to real. This event took place at the University of California, Berkeley on November 28, 2007. 30 min.

Incl. articles of depictions of the city in science-fiction films; Tokyo's portrayal in Japanese features; absurdism in Chinese urban dramas; the reflection of city life in the pacing of much Indian cinema; Korean portrayals of Seoul; New York in "Zelig" and Sao Paulo in "Macunaima".

Contents: Unreal city : cinematic representation, globalisation and the ambiguities of metropolitan life / Preben Kaarsholm -- The city and the real : Chinnamul and the left cultural movement in the 1940s / Moinak Biswas -- Reading the city, reading the film : remarks on a theme in Balazs, Krakauer and Benjamin / Peter Larsen -- Reading a song of the city : images of the city in literature and films / Sudipta Kaviraj -- Realism and fantasy in representations of metropolitan life in Indian cinema / M. Madhava Prasad -- A close up on Salman Rushdie's Midnight's children / Martin Zerlang -- The "Bollywoodisation" of the Indian cinema : cultural nationalism in a global arena / Ashish Rajadhyaksha -- Bollywood in diasporas : in the tracks of a twice-displaced community / Manas Ray and Madhuja Mukherjee -- Colonialism and the built space of cinema in Nigeria / Brian Larkin -- Indian cinema in Durban : egregation, business and the visions of identity from the 1950s to the 1970s / Vashna Jagarnath -- The exhilaration of dread : genre, narrative form and film style in contemporary urban action films / Ravi S. Vasudevan -- Vigilantism and the pleasures of masquerade : the female spectator of Vijayasanthi films / Tejaswini Niranjana.

"Part of a special issue exploring film and video in relation to architecture and pace. An introduction to the issue, which contains articles dealing with the city and its representations through moving images. Cinematic representation has changed alongside emergent urbanism in the 20th century, depicting these shifts in topography and human constitution and to some extent affecting them. Southern California can be taken as a paradigm for a different kind of urbanism--one increasingly dependent on the automobile, sprawling, and decentered. Moreover, Los Angeles is both a global center for media industries that increasingly affect contemporary life and the location of vigorous--though critically overlooked--"underground" film and video communities. The articles in this issue approach "Los Angeles" as a problem of representation, a site of film production, a tradition within the American avant-garde, and a kind of urban development under the influence of filmic representations." [Art Index]

Cinema and architecture : towards understanding the cinematic sense of place and its relationship to the built environmentThesis (Ph.D. in Architecture)--University of California, Berkeley, May 1992.

MAIN: 308t 1992 193

Desmazieres, Catherine.

"New York Dans Le Cinema De Science-Fiction: Le Personnage De L'alien Dans Sa Relation A La Ville." Transl/Info: [New York in the cinema of science fiction: the personage of the alien in relation to the city]. Revue Franc¸aise d'Etudes Américaines [France] 1993 (56): 163-174.

"Science fiction films show New York City through the eyes of a foreigner, an "alien," be it an extraterrestrial, an earthly monster, or a super-hero. The alien's presence in the city underscores the shortcomings of civilization - New York is ridden by violence, crime, and corruption - while reinforcing the mythical appeal of the world's most recognizable city. The various images of New York on the screen actually give us a glimpse of the "real" city, as the cinema blends all visions into a unique, multisided, mythical entity, a city that draws its reality from the fiction that invents it." [America: History and Life]

"A report on "Cinema and the City," a conference held at University College, Dublin, in March 1999, and a review of Anke Gleber's new book The Art of Taking a Walk. The conference featured three keynote speeches addressing, among other things, the history of the Irish film censors, the filmic role of Bunker Hill in Los Angeles, and the question of cinema and architecture. The event was made particularly valuable by the provocative connections that were made, which included the implication that architects could gain from careful consideration of film a far better understanding of the resonances of space and the profane, inventive semiotics of pedestrian movement. The issue of the arts and analytics of walking is also relevant to a reading of Gleber's book, which deals with flanerie as a mode of perception unique to, and expressive of, modernity. The writer discusses Gleber's account of a scene in Walter Ruttmann's film Berlin: the Symphony of the City, arguing that it demonstrates the productivity of thinking the city through cinema." [Art Index]

Donald, Stephanie.

Tourism and the branded city : film and identity on the Pacific Rim.
Aldershot, England ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, c2007.

"New York City." In: The Columbia companion to American history on film : how the movies have portrayed the American past / edited by Peter C. Rollins. New York : Columbia University Press, c2003.

Media Center PN1995.9.U64.C65 2003

Doe Refe PN1995.9.U64.C65 2003

Moffitt PN1995.9.U64.C65 2003

PFA PN1995.9.U64.C65 2003

Dowdell, Jennifer

"The landscape of film: landscape architecture plays a role in a film about the cost and consequence of development."
Landscape architecture 2002 Oct., v.92, n.10, p.44,

Desser, David

"Race, Space and Class: The Politics of Cityscapes in Science-Fiction Films."
In: Alien zone II : the spaces of science-fiction cinema / edited by Annette Kuhn. London ; New York : Verso,
1999.

MAIN Stack PN1995.9.S26.A8184 1999

Droege, Peter .

"Cine-city." Places 1988, v.5, no.3, p.[76-77]

Edmonds, Lisa N.

"Cities on the Edge of Forever: Urban Images of the Future in Film." In: The image of the city in literature, media, and society ; selected papers [from the] 2003 conference [of the] Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery / edited by Will Wright and Steven Kaplan. Pueblo, Co.: The Society, 2003

"This paper historicizes American cities after the Second World War through the rich motif of noir literature and film. But, in doing so, the paper is also a critical consideration of noir's work in tudies. Noir has been drawn, often usefully but also unfortunately, away from its referents, from the terrain that it most directly summons but also from the spaces in which its contradictions are most apparent. Moving from a discussion of the distractions of Chinatown to contextual themes such as mobility and ruin, the paper links noir criticism and noir texts with broader debates in postwar urbanism and modernism. As just part of these discourses, noir not only is irreducible to certain essences, but can potentially perform the opposite role, challenging conventions of urban understanding and practice. The result would be a more detailed and subtle account of modernism's American geographies."

This essay considers issues of the cinema, architecture, women, and the city by focusing on several production numbers directed by Busby Berkeley that are set within an urban environment: 'Lullaby of Broadway' (1935), '42nd Street' (1933), and 'I Only Have Eyes for You' (1934). Beyond reading the city's space and architecture as a gendered topos, the essay gestures toward connections between Berkeley's Hollywood productions and the history of French, Soviet, and German avant-garde cinemas.

Fishbein, Leslie.

"From Sodom to Salvation: The Image of New York City in Films about Fallen Women, 1899-1934." New York History. 70(2):171-90. 1989 Apr

Flickinger, Brigitte

"Cinemas in the City: Berlin's Public Space in the 1910s and 1920s." Film Studies
Volume 10, SPRING 2007, pp 72-86

"In the early years of the cinema and into the 1910s and 1920s, it was less the film than cinema-going itself that attracted urban publics. In this era, people were enthusiastic about technology and the achievements ofm modernity; while at the same time they felt anxious about the rapid and radical changes in their social and economic life. IN Germany, this contradictory experience was especially harsh and perceptible in the urban metropolis of Berlin. The article demonstrates how within city life, Berlin cinemas - offering the excitement of innovation as well as optimal distraction and entertainment - provided an pace where, by cinema-going, appeal and uncertainty could be positively reconciled."

Foot, John M.

"Cinema and the city. Milan and Luchino Visconti's Rocco and his Brothers (1960)." Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 4(2), (1999), pp. 209-235.

"The writer discusses how the postwar movie screens of Los Angeles negotiated the materiality and mobility of the automobile driver and the immateriality and stasis of the spectatorial experience. The writer considers screens as component pieces of architecture, virtual windows that render the wall permeable to light and "ventilation" in new ways and that dramatically change the materialities of built space." [Art Index]

"Part of a special section on architecture and motion pictures. The writer discusses the relationship between architecture "as discourse" and the discursive experience of film. The writer attempts to rediscover architectural experience in terms of real spatial processes that can appear as operational difficulties within film; these filmic difficulties include the filmability of the city as a question of politics of spatial experience, which is highlighted as both a locus of film critique and an encounter with architecture. Scenes from three Greek movies are selected to exemplify spatial experience symptomatically to the film event and to the directing intentions of the films from which they were taken. The psychoanalytic concept of the Imaginary as a formative and dialectical instance for subjectivity is also discussed to enable a critical understanding of the image across film and architecture beyond the visual/countervisual paradigm." [Art Index]

Geography, the media & popular culture

Edited by Jacquelin Burgess and John R. Gold. London : Croom Helm, c1985.

A new exhibition illustrates the intimate way in which architecture, film, and urban planning relate to one another. "Film Architecture: Set Designs from Metropolis to Blade Runner" debuted at Brown University's David Winton Bell Gallery in Providence, Rhode Island, and features 140 items, including sets, drawings, models, photos, film clips, and statements.

Gleber, Anke.

"Female Flanerie and the Symphony of the City." In: Women in the metropolis : gender and modernity in Weimar culture / edited by Katharina von Ankum. pp: 67-88. Berkeley : University of California Press, c1997. Weimar and now ; 11

MAIN Stack HQ1623.W66 1997 1997

Gleber, Anke.

"Women on the Screens and Streets of Modernity: In Search of the Female Flaneur." In: The image in dispute : art and cinema in the age of photography / edited by Dudley Andrew 1st ed. pp: 55-85. Austin : University of Texas Press, 1997.

"From Metropolis to The city: film visions of the future city, 1919-1939." In Geography, the media & popular culture / edited by Jacquelin Burgess and John R. Gold.p. 123-43 London : Croom Helm, c1985.

"Architectural visions, celluloid frames; from 'Metropolis' in 1926 to the Gotham City of 'Batman,' films have shown audiences what is lovable about cities and what is scary." (set design in motion pictures) The New York Times Jan 7, 1996 v145 s2 pH11(N) pH11(L) col 1 (34 col in)

"The writer examines the reception of the illusion created by miniatures in seven films: Fritz Lang's Metropolis, David Butler's Just Imagine, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, Tim Burton's Batman and Edward Scissorhands, and Alex Proyas's The Crow and Dark City. In each of these films, on which thousands or millions of dollars were spent on elaborate miniature photography, viewers are treated to an aerial vista of a city into which they descend along with the protagonists. While the express ambition of the effects artists is to provide an illusion of a believable city viewed from above, the full pleasure of the film relies on its being seen as a set to be gazed at, beyond anything that either Disneyland or the 1939 World's Fair could offer. Rather than menacing viewers, the filmic miniature permits them to disarm and colonize troubling cultural spaces in what it suggests and omits of America's actual inner-city problems." [Art Index]

The writer discusses the way cities are portrayed in recent British movies. Noting the more naturalistic view of the built environment taken by British directors, she discusses the cityscapes in a number of films, including Billy Elliot, Purely Belter, The Golden Bowl, The Full Monty, and The Wings of a Dove.

Holtan, Orley I.

"Individualism, Alienation and The Search For Community: Urban Imagery In Recent American Films."
Journal of Popular Culture 1971 4(4): 933-942.

"American science fiction movies in the talkie era generally contain the most achieved and suggestive urban fantasies. All representations of the American city in such movies mostly depend on two components: myth and history. Symbolized as the achievement of a noble humanity, the city is often presented as suffering from the harsh assaults of a hostile and alien identity: monsters or extraterrestrial beings. A second representation, depicting the cities under nightmarish features, came later and is related to the recent evolution of American cities. In such movies as Blade Runner, Invasion Los Angeles, Terminator, and Robocop, the enemy is no more an extraneous entity, but spreads out from the corrupted heart of the decaying city. One can see in this interiorization of the evil forces threatening the city dwellers the long way covered since the confident days of the consumer society to the present-day fears of American life." [America History and Life]

"Part of a special issue exploring film and video in relation to architecture and pace. The writer discusses the choice of locations for murder in films set in Los Angeles. There are urban "requirements" for a location where a murder should take place, with a good crime scene identifying poverty as local color for murder. This visual imagery of the decaying inner city has reinforced a Victorian panic about ethnicity and class as well as strengthening illusions about where crime-ridden cities end and safe suburbs start. The noir location thus reflects the perversities of consumer panic as a way to hide urban realities, a paradox that gives noir its presence and power. It seems that key locations for L.A. movie murders require two elements: A nearby consumer monument and a patina that reinforces the false memories of Los Angeles." [Art Index]

Kokonis, Michael

"Peter Greenaway's The Belly of an Architect: A Semiologist's Feast." Semiotica: Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies/Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique, vol. 115, no. 1-2, pp. 81-100, 1997.

"From its early years to the present, Johannesburg has escaped the strictures of literary as well as civil decorum. The city has appeared to planners and artists alike to be unimaginable as well as unmanageable. While the deep divisions of apartheid Johannesburg inspired the clear-cut conflicts of anti-apartheid drama, the more ambiguous fractures of the contemporary city have lent themselves to the creation of vivid but elliptical narratives of shifting alliances more suited to the montage and mise en sc?ne of cinema. A few feature-length films with international distribution, such as Jump the Gun (1996) and Fools (1997), have generated multiple readings to the exclusion of smaller, more experimental films such as The Foreigner (1997) and A Drink in the Passage (2002) or the television series The Line (1994) and Gaz'Lam (2002 ff.) whose association with television, whether through funding or production for serial broadcast, has apparently kept them from critical view. This article redresses that balance with close analysis and contextual relocation of cinematic and televisual representations of Johannesburg, the edgy city." [Project Muse]

Kruth, Patricia.

"Le New York de Martin Scorsese, le New York de Woody Allen." Revue Française d'Études Américaines. 16(56):135-44. 1993 May

"New York is at the core of the works of filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen. Their relationships to the city they love are, however, basically different. Scorsese's mise en scène brings out the conflict between the city and the often marginal antagonists in search of themselves and of success; Woody Allen's protagonists tell about their perfect urban integration. The two visions of the city may not be superimposed. Scorsese's camera, starting from Little Italy, explores all five boroughs; Allen feels more comfortable in Manhattan, especially around Central Park, with occasional excursions to Brooklyn. Both filmmakers use the roofs of New York in similar ways, in homage to the Hollywood tradition. Yet they diverge in their original uses of bridges, the El, and the Manhattan skyline. Two contrasting symbolic images emerge. Allen's small town, filmed and loved as a woman, is a unique place where nature is integrated into the heart of civilization. In Scorsese's New York, there is no place for couples; it is a city not unlike Los Angeles, an abstract asphalt jungle that symbolizes all cities." [America: History and Life]

"It has been suggested that the modern city, which bombards its inhabitants with a rapid succession of fragmentary visual images, trained its city-dwellers in the viewing habits required by the cinema. This article explores the dual fascination with urban life and the cinema in the Spanish avant-garde of the late 1920s, in the light of Huyssen's suggestion that the avant-garde was a reaction against modernism's attempt to distance itself from the rise of mass culture which accompanied urbanization."

"Hong Kong consumers of popular culture have recently been obsessed with cyberpunk culture. One film exploiting the techniques and passions of cyberculture is 'Wicked City' or 'Yaoshou dushi' (1992) directed by Peter Mak (Mak Tai Kit) and produced by Tsui Hark. It is discussed here as exceptional in its redeployment of the cultural imaginaries of Hollywood movies, Japanese comics, and Hong Kong's own ideology. Issues of colonialism, the alienatory power of the nation-state, hybridity, androgyny, time and history and, for Hong Kong, the rare critique of the capitalism, are all addressed in this film and in our discussion of the text and its context. [Expanded Academic Index]

Leigh, N.G., Kenny, J.

"The city of cinema: Interpreting urban images on film."
Journal Of Planning Education and Research
16 (1): 51-55 FAL 1996

"To augment the economic and political analysis of cities which is the traditional content of urban planning curricula, the authors developed a course titled Cinema City. The objective of the course is to expand the students' understanding of both how people respond to life in cities and how this response is in fact influenced by the images they see depicted in film. Striking arguments can be made that our willingness to address urban problems is influenced by our history of such popular images. This paper outlines the authors' experience with the course, indicating both the pedagogical benefits and scholarly value of such an approach."

Lent, Tina Olsin.

"The Dark Side Of the Dream: The Image of Los Angeles in Film Noir."
Southern California Quarterly 1987 69(4): 329-348.

"Discusses the film noir genre popular in the 1940's, which portrayed Los Angeles as an impersonal, pessimistic, and dehumanized environment. The writings of James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, Horace McCoy, and others were adapted and made into such classic films as Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and The Blue Dahlia. The Spanish architectural styles of residences, the seediness of downtown Los Angeles, exotic landscaping, the river channel, the Hollywood Bowl, and industrial locations were featured in these films and usually given a dark interpretation, as Los Angeles came to represent disillusionment with the American Dream." [America: History and Life]

"Boyz in the Woods: Urban Wilderness in American Cinema." In: The nature of cities : ecocriticism and urban environments Edited by Michael Bennett and David W. Teague. pp: 137-56. Tucson : University of Arizona Press, c1999.

A video essay about how movies have portrayed the city of Los Angeles. The film looks at Los Angeles from three perspectives: first, as a background for movies, second, as a character in movies, and third, as a subject for a movie. Research/text/production, Thom Andersen. 2003. 169 min. DVD 7495

Contents: Introduction: screening strangers in fortress Europe -- Journeys of hope to fortress Europe: cross-border and migratory films -- Cities of hope: the cinematic cityscapes of fortress Europe -- The white continent is dark: migration and miscegenation in Bernardo Bertolucci's Besieged (1998) -- Intifada of the banlieues: La Haine revisited -- The camp trilogy: Michael's Winterbottom's In this world, Code 46, and The road to Guantanamo -- Afterword: beyond strangers and post-Europe.
Summary "Yosefa Loshitzky challenges the utopian notion of a post-national "New Europe" by focusing on the waves of migrants and refugees that some view as a potential threat to European identity, a concern heightened by the rhetoric of the war on terror, the London Underground bombings, and the riots in Paris's banlieues. Opening a cinematic window onto this struggle, Loshitzky determines patterns in the representation and negotiation of European identity in several European films from the late 20th and early 21st centuries, including Bernardo Bertolucci's Besieged, Stephen Frears's Dirty Pretty Things, Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine, and Michael Winterbottom's In This World, Code 46, and The Road to Guantanamo." -- Back cover.

Louagie, Kimberly .

""It belongs in a museum": the image of museums in American film, 1985-1995." Journal of American Culture Winter 1996 v19 n4 p41(10)

"Many motion pictures portray museums as the realm of several kinds of exclusivity. Museums are regarded in film as examples of architecture, as repositories for artifacts deserving respect, and as locations of sophisticated people. Museums rarely fulfill these roles for many people, and are becoming increasingly aware of and interested in film. Some museums have begun to make movies about their exhibits." [Expanded Academic Index]

Lu, Sheldon H.

"Tear Down the City: Reconstructing pace in Contemporary Chinese Popular Cinema and Avant-Garde Art." In: The urban generation : Chinese cinema and society at the turn of the twenty-first century / Zhang Zhen, editor.
Durham : Duke University Press, 2007.

Main (Gardner) Stacks PN1993.5.C4 U73 2007

Pacific Film Archive PN1993.5.C4 U73 2007

Lukinbeal, C.

"The map that precedes the territory: An introduction to essays in cinematic geography." GeoJournal Volume 59, Number 4 / April, 2004

Considers the post-Franco climate of Spain and its cities, as reflected in the films of Pedro Almodo?var, the cultural movement La Movida, Madrid's first socialist mayor, Enrique Tierno Galva?n, the emergence of Barcelona, and numerous international events in Seville, Bilbao, Merida and elsewhere. First article in theme issue on Spanish cities.

"City symphony" films provide a general sense of life in a particular metropolis, often by highlighting characteristic aspects of city life over the course of a composite day. The writer discusses Swiss-born Rudy Burckhardt's extensive film documentation of New York City and Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, the greatest American city symphony movie." [Art Index]

MacDonald, Scott

"The City as the country: The New York City symphony from Rudy Burckhardt to Spike Lee." Film Quarterly, v. 51, Winter 1997/98, pp. 220.

""City symphony" films provide a general sense of life in a particular metropolis, often by highlighting characteristic aspects of city life over the course of a composite day. The writer discusses Swiss-born Rudy Burckhardt's extensive film documentation of New York City and Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, the greatest American city symphony movie." [Art Index]

MacDonald, Scott

The garden in the machine : a field guide to independent films about place Berkeley : University of California Press, 2001.

"City, Nature, Highway: Changing Images In American Film And Theater."
Journal of Popular Culture 1975 9(1): 14-19.

"Contrasts the image of cities in pre-World War II drama and films with postwar productions. In the earlier period the city was depicted as bad but as a carrier of civilization while in the postwar period the civilizing capacities of the city are displaced by its bleakness, depersonalization, and alienation. There is a disenchantment with nature, which has disappeared as an escape from cities. Roads, like cities, are now bound up with savage wilderness in the imagery of film and drama." [America History and Life]

"Filmmaker Peter Greenaway's use of architecture in his motion pictures made him a perfect choice for the Royal Institute of British Architects' Architecture Centre recent "Framed" season of architecture in film. Speaking at the institute, Greenaway maintained that an architectural metaphor is appropriate for cinema, as it involves space, movement, time, a 360-degree world, and all five senses. He is currently working on a series of exhibitions called "The Stairs," which attempt to marry notions of architecture, cinema, and painting in a number of staged events in cities around the world." [Art Index]

"Spectacle and death in the city of Bombay cinema." In: The spaces of the modern city : imaginaries, politics, and everyday life / edited by Gyan Prakash and Kevin M. Kruse. Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2008.

"Part of a special section on production and set design in filmmaking. The function of architecture-as-resonator is endlessly explored in French poetic realist cinema of the 1930s. Seminal films like Le Quai des brumes (Marcel Carne, 1938), La Bete humaine (Jean Renoir, 1938) and Le Jour se leve (Marcel Carne, 1939) are not only powerfully anchored to recognizable, normally urban, landscapes, but they also depend heavily on atmospheric milieux and spatial specifics to explore deeper levels of meaning embedded in the narrative. This specific strand of 1930s French decor is deemed inherently performative, whereby a reciprocal transfer between individual and decor serves as an interpretative matrix for each film. It is a decor that "speaks", paraphrasing the concerns of the narrative and architecturally mirroring the mental states and emotions of the characters inhabiting them." [Art Index]

"The writer discusses the transformation of Eastern Europe urbanism in three filmic instances. Dziga Vertov's Man With A Movie Camera (1929), was a formally radical film that captured, or perhaps more precisely, constructed an image of the Soviet City. Andrzej Wajda's Man of Marble (1976), explains the mechanism behind the propaganda and production of a new settlement, Nova Huta. Finally, Krzysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue is organized around the housing block, which becomes a stylized representation of the everday life of its inhabitants." [Art Index]

This article makes use of Darko Suvin's theory of the novum and Raymond Williams's cultural materialism to analyse three urban-dystopian science fiction films: Fritz Lang?s Metropolis (1927), Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) and Alex Proyas's Dark City (1998). It argues for the central significance of utopia, dystopia and cinema to SF. It explores the themes of class and gender, the uses of intertextuality, and the representations of the human and the posthuman in these three films. Drawing on Jameson, Baudrillard and others, it argues that the first film exhibits a characteristically modern, the latter two different versions of a characteristically postmodern, structure of feeling?.

Mira, Alberto.

"Transformations of the Urban Landscape in Spanish Film Noir."
In: Spaces in European Cinema. Konstantarakos, Myrto (ed. and introd.).

MAIN: PN1993.5.E8 S69 2000

Mitchell, Bill.

"Really, really scary."
RIBA journal 2004 Sept., v.111, n.9, p.18

"On disaster films, in which there is the spectacle of crashing skyscrapers, but also in which cities remain unscathed, but their inhabitants have perished."

"The writer critically assesses the trope of the 19th-century flaneur/flaneuse as found in William Wyler's Roman Holiday (1953) and Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (2003). She states that both of these films build a traditional narrative from the adventures of a single female protagonist as she negotiates urban terrain. She suggests that in tracing the references to the flaneur/flaneuse in the films, it is possible to begin to map a trajectory of contemporary gender relations in respect to pace from the post-World War II era to the present, as well as to comprehend the context in which the city itself is viewed as a site for such transformations." [Art Index]

"The treatment of US cities in cinemas is examined through a study of how these cities are depicted by American moviemakers. Films are partly responsible for the occurrence and perception of urban affairs. Movies are effective venues for looking into urban pasts, presents and futures, aside from being able to offer insights into the Americans' collective hopes, fears, phobias and fantasies." [Expanded Academic Index]

Introduces articles about cities in motion pictures published in the November 2003 issue of the journal "Cities". Understanding of the city to include its urban, suburban and peripheral forms; Significance of such references.

": Part of a special section on architecture and motion pictures. The writer examines the relationship between architecture and motion pictures. He aims to establish a context of interest in the world of cinema for architects and particularly architectural students. He explores studio work as "natural film sets" using the example of experiments with architectural projects developed by students from the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge, England. He reports on the modes of representation used--drawings, physical models, and computer animation. He concludes that these means could offer an interesting starting point for the motion pictures industry, particularly for storyboarding, while the architect can learn from the filmmaker's ability to represent and move through spaces." [Art Index]

Phillips, Alastair.

City of darkness, city of light : emigre filmmakers in Paris 1929-1939 Amsterdam : Amsterdam University Press, c2004.

Contents: Geographic and cinematic theory : framing spaces and sequencing spectacles. Re-presenting the place pastiche / Stuart C. Aitken and Leo E. Zonn -- Third cinema and the Third World / Gerald M. Macdonald -- A mapping of cinematic places : icons, ideology, and the power of (mis)representation / Jeff Hopkins -- Making people and places. Jerusalem, Dover Beach, and Kings Cross : imagined places as metaphors of the British class struggle in Chariots of Fire and The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner / Martyn J. Bowden -- Outside of nothing : the place of community in The Outsiders / Denis Wood -- Sunshine and shadow : lighting and color in the depiction of cities on film / Larry Ford -- Of pelicans and men : symbolic landscapes, gender, and Australia's Storm Boy / Leo E. Zonn and Stuart C. Aitken -- The myth of heroism : man and desert in Lawrence of Arabia / Christina B. Kennedy -- Taking time with places. Filming Route 66 : documenting the Dust Bowl Highway / Arthur Krim. The city as cinematic space : modernism and place in Berlin, Symphony of a City / Wolfgang Natter -- We're going to do it right this time : cinematic representations of urban planning and the British new towns, 1939 to 1951 / John R. Gold and Stephen V. Ward.

The inner city has been portrayed in a number of US and European movies. New York is a favorite location for many US movies such as 'Laws of Gravity' from Nick Gomez. The movies are discussed in detail.

"Part of a special section on architecture and motion pictures. Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture describe Times Square in New York. They contend that Times Square is structured as a cinematic field, distorting and conforming to the speculative caprices of real-estate developers combined with the hallucinatory ethics of consumerism, entertainment, and tourism. They discuss the structures of Times Square, which range from meeting places to public artworks." [Art Index]

Second in series on urban design investigates the emergence of the film montage method as a new form of urban representation during the early part of the 20th cent., and its subsequent influence on urban design.

Sadler, William J.; Haskins, Ekaterina V.

"Metonymy and the Metropolis: Television Show Settings and the Image of New York City." Journal Of Communication Inquiry, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 195-216, July 2005

"This article argues that contemporary portrayals of cityscapes on television create a "postcard effect," a way of seeing that affords the viewer the pleasureofa tourist gaze. This disposition both reflects and legitimizes a fragmented experience of visiting a location without immersing oneself in the intricacies of its politics and geography. Building on critical tudies, film theory, semiotics, and critical ethnography, this article analyzes depictions of New York City in five television shows (Seinfeld, Friends, Sex and the City, Felicity, and The Sopranos) to demonstrate how metonymic representations of the city produce a narrative of a tourist destination on display." [Communication Abstracts]

Saks, Lucia

"Film Spectactor or Film Auteur? "Flaneurial" Reinscriptions."
Spectator - The University of Southern California Journal of Film and Television 18:1 (Fall-Winter 1997) p. 24-37

"he writers discuss three films that work out the fears and promises of cyberspace in relation to a particular model of the city. The Net, directed by Irwin Winkler, focuses mostly on fears surrounding the Internet's ability to erode both private and public spaces, but it ultimately repudiates electronic space and returns the viewer to a version of the modern city, sharply divided between "the crowd" and domesticity. Hackers, directed by Ian Softley, attempts to elaborate a more optimistic image of the Internet through notions of the transparent modernist city. In Strange Days, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, virtual reality promises reembodiment and integration beyond the fragmentation of the city. These contemporary films about the Internet are troubling because they provide no stable place for women or nonwhite citizens within the space of the Internet. They may display a certain "truth" about gendered, racialized, and class access to electronic space, but they do nothing to problematize it." [Art Index]

Sanders, James

Celluloid skyline: New York and the movies New York : Alfred A. Knopf : Distributed by Random House, c2001.

"Part of a special section on film and architecture. In 1920s Germany, the Expressionist impulse transferred itself from the canvas on to the cinema screen, resulting in some of the most dramatic works of film architecture. The formulations of Expressionist paintings, which fought against impressionistic superficiality and illuminated agitated inner worlds, were realized in German Expressionist films in which the heroes roam through a labyrinth of narrow alleys that can represent both a medieval city and a spiritual space that has become visible. In The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the major film in this genre, the architecture consists of narrow, high rooms and lanes, inside and out, a labyrinth that is completely enclosed and apparently inescapable. Subsequent film spaces and architecture have evolved from the Expressionist space-cell. Indeed, in a number of films, including Metropolis, Key Largo, and Blade Runner, the chosen space, building, or city often becomes the leading character." [Art Abstracts]

Screening the city

Edited by Mark Shiel and Tony Fitzmaurice. London ; New York : Verso, 2003.

Cities have always played an important role in the plots and themes of motion pictures. An analysis of that role, especially in light of the many news media stories depicting the collapse of US cities in the 1990s, is presented.

Shonfield, Katherine

Walls have feelings : architecture, film and the city
London ; New York : Routledge, 2000.

"Most films set in San Francisco belong to the Hollywood classical cinema; their aim is to entertain a large audience through a double plot (love story and adventure story) for which they first use San Francisco as a background without significantly changing it. This implies two levels of representation: the photographic images, partly shot in Los Angeles studios, are traces of an objective reality that, in its turn, the story invests with specific meanings. The opening sequence of The Birds, for instance, includes real pictures of cable cars in Union Square, but also introduces a special way of looking at them that connects birds with Melanie's physical presence. This leads to the question: what is the influence of San Francisco's actual as well as mythical history - and the use fiction has made of them - on the images the films convey?" [America: History and Life]

"Cities on the Edge of Time: The cience-Fiction Film." In:
Alien zone II: the spaces of science-fiction cinema

Edited by Kuhn. pp: 123-43. London; New York: Verso, 1999.

UCB Main PN1995.9.S26 A8184 1999 1999

Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery. Conference (13th : 2003 : Colorado Springs, Co.) The image of the city in literature, media, and society ; selected papers [from the] 2003 conference [of the] Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery / edited by Will Wright and Steven Kaplan. Pueblo, Co.: The Society, 2003

"A look into the futuristic images shown in old and new science fiction films demonstrate the architectural visions of various architects and science fiction writers. Some of the films include 'Things to Come,' 'Blade Runner,' 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind,' and '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.'" [Expanded Academic Index]

Sorlin. Pierre

"'Stop the rural exodus': images of the country in French films of the 1950s." (Special Issue: Audiovisual Media in France) Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television June 1998 v18 n2 p183(15)

"A discussion on the portrayal of agricultural life in France in the 1950s seen through the works of amateur cinematographers and government propaganda films is presented. The 1950s was a period when rural-urban migration was increasing. Despite substantial productivity increases due to modern farming methods, many farmers were still impoverished. The films depicting agricultural life were made to discourage rural migration to the cities and the traditional rural values of agricultural people were presented in a positive light. The positive and often idealistic portrayals of French rural society were, however, filmed at a time when traditional rural life was becoming antiquated." [Expanded Academic Index]

Spatial turns : space, place, and mobility in German literary and visual culture

"The National Film Theatre's "Sunday Silents" series in May 2000 attempts to chart "a fascination with and concomitant fear of the metropolis" in the mood of the late 1920s. Each of the films on show responds in its own way to the experiences and ethics of the industrial urban population between the wars. In Metropolis, Fritz Lang has a monumental, objective view of the city and its inhabitants, while Dziga Vertov's machine eye in Man With A Movie Camera comes at the subject from all angles. The attitudes of F. W. Murnau's Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and the 1913 film Traffic in Souls have been rehashed again and again in films that are half censorious, half titillated by the mores of the decadent city. Such cheap thrills may soon be a thing of the past, as suburbia begins to replace the inner city as the main psychological battlefield of American films." [Art Index]

"The writer discusses the topography of urban ruins as represented in films made about Berlin, Germany, from 1945 to 1950. He states that although all of Germany was in a state of ruin after the end of World War II in 1945, the blend of the psychological, ideological, and representational--whether urban, architectural or cinematic--was apparent nowhere more than in the physical terrain of Berlin. He goes on to examine the ruin film as a reflection of a particular historical moment as well as a potential agent for imagining and fashioning an urban landscape." [Art Index]

"Architect Jean Nouvel and filmmaker Wim Wenders view architecture and cinema as graphic transcriptions of ideas or written texts. Wenders identifies the screenplay with the movie itself; Nouvel narrates the idea of architecture instead of sketching it as befits the architectural profession. Each confronts the end of the millennium in both contemporary and futuristic terms." [Art Index]

"Part of a special section exploring the relationships between media and the form, social life, and perception of the urban environment. A discussion of ten films screened in the University of Michigan's Master of Urban Design Program because of their depiction of the intersection between urban form and social life. The films are The Naked City, The Third Man, Battle of Algiers, Wings of Desire, Salaam Bombay, Do the Right Thing, Love Jones, Chinese Box, Beijing Bicycle, and Crash. The writer summarizes the reasons for using film in urban design studio, describes the criteria used to select films, identifies some of their lessons, and reflects on the value of film in teaching urban design." [Art Index]

Suarez, Juan A.

"City Films, Modern Spatiality, and the End of the World Trade Center." In:
Film and television after 9/11 / edited by Wheeler Winston Dixon. Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press,
c2004.

John David Rhodes and Elena Gorfinkel, editors.
Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, c2011.

Main (Gardner) Stacks PN1995.9.S4 T35 2011

Contents: Introduction : the matter of places / Elena Gorfinkel and John David Rhodes -- Cinematic style and the places of modernity. From Venice to the Valley : California slapstick and the Keaton comedy short / Charles Wolfe -- The eclipse of place : Rome's EUR, from Rossellini to Antonioni / John David Rhodes -- Tales of Times Square : sexploitation's secret history of place / Elena Gorfinkel -- Derek Jarman in the Docklands : the last of England and Thatcher's London / Mark W. Turner -- Place as index of cinema. The Cinecittø Refugee Camp 1944-1950 / Noa Steimatsky -- Right here in Mason City : The music man and small town nostalgia / Linda A. Robinson -- When the set becomes permanent : the spatial re-configuration of Hollywood North / Aurora Wallace -- The last place on Earth? allegories of deplacialization in Dennis Hopper's The last movie / Ara Osterweil -- Geopolitical displacements. The non-place of Argento : The bird with the crystal plumage and Roman urban history / Michael Siegel -- The placement of shadows : what's inside William Kentridge's Black box/Chambre Noire? / Frances Guerin -- Into the "imaginary" and "real" place : Stan Douglas's site-specific film and video projection / Ji-Hoon Kim -- Doing away with words : synaesthetic dislocations in Okinawa and Hong Kong / Rosalind Galt -- (Not) being there. Moving through images / Brian Price -- Living dead spaces : the desire for the local in the films of George Romero / Hugh S. Manon -- On the grounds of television / Meghan Sutherland.

Thomas, Deborah.

Reading Hollywood : spaces and meanings in American film
London; New York : Wallflower, 2001.

"The writer traces a history of the relationship between visual media and architecture. The Panorama- and Diorama-buildings created between 1780 and 1840 used photorealistic painting to achieve perfect simulation of such scenes as land- and cityscapes. The form of these buildings was derived strictly from their function; they thus became the models for a wide variety of 20th-century media-oriented building types for motion pictures, exhibitions, concerts, and fairs. With the advent of film, special architectural models or semi-permanent architectures were created, while architectonic imagery also began to appear in film itself. The most important example of this development is Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1926), which combines architecture with light and movement. Making extensive use of glass and skeleton construction, Mies van der Rohe's architecture can also be interpreted as a exploitation of dramatic light effects, while Le Corbusier's Philips pavilion at the 1 958 Brussels world exposition was erected as a "Poeme Electronique," a complex structure creating a virtual space surrounded by sequences of images, colors, and sounds. Current experiments with cyberspace and architecture explore a multimedia synthesis of art and architecture." [Art Index]

"Editorial [link between the creation of films and the development of our built environment]." Architectural Design (London, England) v. 64 (November/December 1994) p. 6-7

"Part of a special section on architecture and motion pictures. An introductory editorial on the link between the creation of movies and the development of the built environment. The beauty of many films featuring the built environment lies in their power to influence viewers' perception and perhaps to invoke a desire for a better architectural environment. The architect is also a cult figure of the 1990s, used by filmmakers when they want to demonstrate a sense of determination, drive, direction, passion, self-motivation, and perhaps a certain sense of arrogance in their characters." [Art Index]

"The City Viewed: The films of Leyda, Browning, and Weinberg." In: Lovers of cinema : the first American film avant-garde, 1919-1945 / edited by Jan-Christopher Horak. Madison, Wis. : University of Wisconsin Press, c1995.

Main (Gardner) Stacks PN1995.9.E96 L68 1995)

PFA PN1995.9.E96 L68 1995

van Schaik, Leon.

"Design for dreaming." (the influence of film on architecture) Film Comment March-April 1989 v25 n2 p28(7)

Demonstrates ways in which an historical assessment of the categories of fiction/non-fiction may open up new perspectives on this dichotomy. Discusses aspects through the oppositions of non-fiction/fiction and landscape/cityscape.

Vidler, Anthony.

"The Explosion of Space: Architecture and the Filmic Imaginary." Assemblage: A Critical Journal of Architecture and Design Culture. 21: 45-59. 1993 Aug.

Discusses the representation of cities in motion pictures. Impact of the metropolis on the construction of identity; Significance of knowledge as an instrument of power in the formation of discourse; Role of discursive conceptions of cities in predetermining the possible representation of the city.

"The City in Twilight: Charting the Genre of the 'City Film', 1900-1930." In:
Cinema & architecture : Méliès, Mallet-Stevens, Multimedia / edited by François Penz and Maureen
London : British Film Institute, 1997.

"Falling Down and the Rise of the Average White Male." In: Women and film : a Sight and sound reader / edited by Pam Cook and Philip Dodd. Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 1993.

Main (Gardner) Stacks PN1995.9.W6 W63 1993

Davies, Jude.

"Against the Los Angeles Symbolic: Unpacking the Racialized Discourse of the Automobile in 1980s and 1990s Cinema." In: Screening the city Edited by Mark Shiel and Tony Fitzmaurice. London ; New York : Verso, 2003.

"Boyz in the Woods: Urban Wilderness in American Cinema." In: The nature of cities : ecocriticism and urban environments / edited by Michael Bennett and David W. Teague.
Tucson : University of Arizona Press, c1999.

Main (Gardner) Stacks PS163 .N38 1999

Mahoney, Elisabeth.

"'The People in Parentheses': Space under Pressure in the Postmodern City." In: The cinematic city

"In 1920, precisionist painter Charles Sheeler and photographer Paul Strand collaborated on Manhatta, widely regarded as the first American avant-garde film. The 11-minute, 35 mm, black-and-white silent short depicts a day in the life of New York City, surveying five square blocks of lower Manhattan from a variety of often vertiginous angles. The film is chronologically positioned as progenitor of the so-called City Symphony film, its offspring including Walter Ruttmann's Berlin Symphony, Joris Ivens's Rain, and Dziga Yertov's Man with the Movie Camera." [Art Index]

Gerstner, David A.

"Manhatta: A National Self-Portrait." In: Manly arts : masculinity and nation in early American cinema / David A. Gerstner. Durham : Duke University Press, 2006.

resents an overview of the life and career of photographer Paul Strand. Features Strand's most famous photographs, clips from his films, and interviews with his wife, friends, and collaborators. DVD 2840

Suarez, Juan A.

"City space, technology, popular culture: the modernism of Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler's 'Manhatta'." ('Manhatta' was a 1921 film showing images of New York, New York) Journal of American Studies, April 2002 v36 i1 p85(22).

"The portrayal of city space in photographer Paul Strand's and painter Charles Sheeler's 1921 documentary film 'Manhatta' is analyzed. By focusing on architectural and technological abstractions, the film denied cultural and other social differences. This reveals elements of early twentieth century American thought about cities and of modernism." [Expanded Academic Index]

The films of Jacques Tati are discussed in relation to Parisian modernism. 'Playtime' (1967) questions the human cost of the modernist urban environment.

James, Davie E.

"Toward a Geo-Cinematic Hermeneutics: Representations of Los Angeles in Non-Industrial Cinema-Killer of Sheep and Water and Power." Wide Angle: A Film Quarterly of Theory, Criticism, and Practice. 20 (3): 23-53. 1998 July.

"'Beautiful Butterflies Trapped Down by Drawing Pins': Or, Peter Greenaway's The Belly of an Architect: A Bagful of Signs and Designs." In: Semiotics around the world : synthesis in diversity : proceedings of the Fifth Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, Berkeley, 1994 / edited by Irmengard Rauch, Gerald F. Carr. Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, 1997.

Grad Svcs P99.I57 1994

MAIN Stack P99.I57 1994

Kolstrup, Søren

"Wings of Desire
Space, Memory and Identity" p.o.v. Number 8, December 1999

The article discusses the modern city using images of city dwellers in photographs, films, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and planning. Marketing is defined as a way to produce desire. The failure of cities to be safe places is explored and attributed, in part, to a sadistic desire for enjoyment that tries to bypass others.

Macek, S.

"Places of horror: Fincher's 'Seven' and fear of the city in recent Hollywood film." College Literature 26 (1): 80-97 WIN 1999

"New films rethink the small town; forty years after "It's a Wonderful Life," the world beyond the cities is being portrayed as full of energy and surprises, sometimes bizarre." The New York Times Dec 21, 1986 v136 s2 pH1(N) pH1(L) col 5 (29 col in)

"Which Way To The Promised Land? Spike Lee's Clockers and The Legacy Of the African American City." African American Review 2001 35(2): 263-279.

"Discusses African American film director Spike Lee's Clockers (1995) in order to demonstrate how Lee links contemporary Brooklyn to black history through key departures from Richard Price's novel Clockers, on which the film is based. Lee uses the image of the train in the film to insert "the tropes of migration, mobility, and settlement into the narrative in order to place history, especially African American history, back into a dialogue with contemporary African American filmmaking." [America History and Life]

McNiven, R.D.

"Middle-class American home of the Fifties: the use of architecture in Nicholas Ray's Bigger than life and Douglas Sirk's All that heaven allows." Cinema Journal v. 22 no. 4 (Summer 1983) p. 38-57

"The writer discusses the transformation of Eastern Europe urbanism in three filmic instances. Dziga Vertov's Man With A Movie Camera (1929), was a formally radical film that captured, or perhaps more precisely, constructed an image of the Soviet City. Andrzej Wajda's Man of Marble (1976), explains the mechanism behind the propaganda and production of a new settlement, Nova Huta. Finally, Krzysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue is organized around the housing block, which becomes a stylized representation of the everday life of its inhabitants." [Art Index]

Minden, Michael.

"The City in Early Cinema: Metropolis, Berlin and October." In: Unreal City: Urban Experience in Modern European Literature and Art / edited by Edward Timms and David Kelley. pp: 193-213. Manchester: Manchester University Press, c1985.

Environ Dsgn NX542.U571 1985

O'Healy, ?ine

"Revisiting the Belly of Naples: The Body and the City in the Films of Mario Martone." Screen, vol. 40, no. 3, pp. 239-56, Fall 1999.

"A close reading of the final scenes in F. W. Murnau's film Nosferatu (1922). During his death scene, the vampire Nosferatu seems to address the houses behind the curtain frame. These covert exchanges between living subjects and inanimate objects are characteristic of the symptoms of modern animation (with animation understood as the transference of energy from a semi-depleted animate subject to its surrounding architecture). With his left hand on his heart and his right hand connected to his houses, the transparent Nosferatu is turned into the center of an energy circuit, as if his own inanimation is feeding into the buildings' animism. The writer goes on to discuss related issues in German art and architecture from the period." [Art Index]

"Through [analysis of] Krzysztof Kie?slowski's film 'Three Colours Red,' and his own photographs of New York City and Sydney, Charles Rice provides an alternative account of the city as a space of image perception. For, rather than alienation and distraction, he finds that these spatial fantasies effectively deliver identification with the distant and unattainable."

"Visual-effects supervisor Paul Franklin explains how a virtual city was created for Christopher Nolan's new film Batman Begins. Much of the film was shot in Chicago, and the digital shots were matched with digital architecture to create Bruce Wayne's hometown. Every building is a faithful reproduction of a real building in the city, with the exception of Wayne Tower, which is imaginar, though all of its components were taken from observed reality. Franklin explains how both a big aerial shot of the city and close-ups of buildings were filmed." [Art Index]

Roma nel cinema

A cura di Americo Sbardella.
Roma : Semar, 2000.

MAIN: PN1995.9.R68 R66 2000

Schleier, M.

"Ayn Rand and King Vidor's Film The Fountainhead: Architectural Modernism, the Gendered Body, and Political Ideology." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians v. 61 no. 3 (September 2002) p. 310-31

"This paper explores Ayn Rand and King Vidor's depiction of a gendered and politicized architectural discourse in the film The Fountainhead (1949), which was based on the writer's best-selling novel. The film has been examined in the contexts of Frank Lloyd Wright's influence and the impact of European modernism on the set designs. This paper expands on the work of previous scholars by considering the effects of such diverse modern architecture, theoreticians, critics, and builders as Wright, Louis Sullivan, Le Corbusier, Sheldon Cheney, and the Starett Brothers, among others, on Rand. New evidence in the Rand Archives and the Warner Brothers Archives also establishes the manner in which she appropriated architectural source materials in the service of her conservative, gender-inflected political agenda. Rand employed these sources in all aspects of the project, including plot construction, character delineation, and the depiction of the profession. Characters are signified by building types (e.g., skyscraper, housing project) or stylistic analogues, which represent their economic or political philosophies. An analysis of Rand's screenplay, her architectural borrowings, and the film's mise en scene elucidates her ideological and prescriptive agenda, namely the destruction of New Deal cooperation and subsidies, which are signified by public housing, in favor of capitalist economics, which are epitomized by skyscrapers." [Art Index]

Segre, Erica

"Reframing the City: Images of Displacement in Mexican Urban Films of the 1940s and 1950s." Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies Volume 10, Number 2 / August 2001

"The writer examines the representation of London, England in films. He focuses on Patrick Keiller's London, which he finds provokes reverie and honors accidental survivals, guiding the viewer backward and forward across the sacred diagonals of the city. Other films considered include Hitchcock's Frenzy, Michael Powell's Peeping Tom, Arthur Woods' They Drive by Night, Jules Dassin's Night and the City, and Christopher Petit's London Labyrinth." [Art Index]

Strathausen, Carsten

"Uncanny Spaces: The City in Ruttmann and Vertov." In: Screening the city Edited by Mark Shiel and Tony Fitzmaurice.
London ; New York : Verso, 2003.

"The modernist city of film noir: the case of Murder, my sweet." In: American modernism across the arts / edited by Jay Bochner and Justin D. Edwards. p. 284-302 New York : Peter Lang, c1999. Studies on themes and motifs in literature ; vol. 46

"How digital technologies are perceived to transform the film medium is one of the key questions associated with modern science fiction and fantasy film. The linearity and fixed temporal rhythms of film may be replaced by the potentially fragmented rhythms of digital culture. This apparent transformation of cinematic constructions of time and memory reworks our understanding of what it means to be human. With its frequent meditations on definitions of the human and its use of special effects, the science fiction genre serves as a useful guide for exploring these questions. The 1998 Alex Proyas' film "Dark City" is used to consider the relationship between digitized constructions of cinematic time and the construction of the human." [IIPA]